Surprise in the Mail

This morning I suddenly heard the sound of lots of birds chirping.  I looked out the window expecting a flock of birds to be passing by or filling a nearby tree but I couldn’t find anything.

I stepped outside on the porch and it was so much louder.  The skies and trees were empty so I started searching around for a nest somewhere on our porch.  Since we use our porch for the farm, there are a lot of places to look like on top of the cooler, and behind it, but I couldn’t find anything.

The chirping was was so loud and so close, but I was stumped.  Finally I noticed a brown box that seemed to  appear out of nowhere on the floor.   When I peaked inside I saw it was packed with the most adorable multicolored baby chicks.   After a little more investigation and I saw that they were delivered by the post office but to the wrong address and according to the invoice there were 55 little bantam chicks packed in that box including 5 roosters.  Since we get a ton of farm related deliveries here, I guess the postman just assumed the chicks were for us.

But our porch floor is too cold for baby chicks, and the instruction sheet said not to let children less than 5 touch them because of disease risk so I did not want to bring them inside. The temptation would be too much, after one little peak my two year old immediately started talking about kissing them (kiss chicken, kiss chicken).

After a couple of frantic phone calls to the neighbor who was supposed to receive them (no answer, cell phone is off) and the hatchery in Texas,   I moved the box into one of our greenhouses which us currently full of flowering tat soi. The folks at the hatchery seemed to think that would be OK for the time being. But by tonight they will need more warmth and water and a little food.

I am hoping they will be OK out there, they really need an incubated box but it is unseasonably warm today and warmer still in the greenhouse.  I really hope that neighbor checks his cell phone messages soon, 55 new baby chicks is a huge unexpected responsibility.   In fact, I better go check on them right now!

7 pm update:

They are still here, no news from the owner (sigh)!  Now they are under a light from a neighbor, in our bathroom and have water. And here is a photo.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Sukkot

Sukkot is one of my favorite Jewish Holidays, and it is wonderful and fun for kids.  You get to build a club house and decorate it with all of your awesome art and crayon creations. You can eat, play, and sing in it, and, if you are lucky, camp out under the stars.

From a farmer’s perspective, the holiday makes lots of sense.  Sukkot falls during the peak of the fall harvest. I find it very natural to feel a direct connection to our ancestors who built sukkot long ago. And from a mother’s perspective,  shifting meals outside is a welcome relief because there is no need to pick up all of the crumbs that fall to the ground.

Sounds a little too perfect, right? What’s the catch?  For us, it’s a bit unusual.  Over the past year, my 4-year-old has shown his first real signs of Christmas envy.  Every once in a while, he will start wistfully talking about candy canes, ornaments, and, of course, Christmas trees. (His main exposure has been friends talking about it at preschool, and the glimmering trees we have stumbled upon here and there.)

Whenever he talks longingly about Christmas, it sends me into a bit of a panic. How will we manage to impart a solid, joyful Jewish identity to our children, with all of its complexity, hard questions, and devastating history — when shimmery, happy, easy going Christmas seems to be hidden around every corner?

In the midst of one somewhat desperate Jewish sales pitch, I  recently found myself saying that during Sukkot, we get to decorate an entire hut–not just one tree.

“You mean with pretty lights and candy canes?” He asked. “That’s one way to decorate,” I said.

We’re in the process of building our sukkah now. All of the pieces from the branches for the frame to the corn stalks on top will come from our farm.  And once it is built, it will be time to decorate.

I am not sure I will be able to find candy canes this time of year (plus I don’t allow my children to eat artificial colors), but I think I will look for some healthy, natural treats to hang from the ceiling.  And if we make some decorations, I guess we can call them sukkah ornaments, because technically they are.

I’m doing my best to make sure that my children have a fun Sukkot this year.  Come Christmas time, we’ll hopefully remember how we played, sang, danced, ate treats, and even got to build and decorate an entire sukkah.

P.S. I would love feedback and thoughts from anyone who has grappled with similar issues.

This post originally appeared on kveller.com.  If you like this post, please click the like button under my piece at the Kveller.com.

Kveller.com offers a Jewish twist on parenting, everything a Jewish family could need for raising Jewish children–including crafts, recipes, activities, Hebrew and Jewish names for babies…and advice from Mayim Bialik.

Rosh Hashana’s Perfect Timing

honey from Israel

The Jewish Holidays bounce around the calendar quite a bit and some years I join the chorus complaining that they came too soon, when we are still in summer mode and just not ready.  But this year Rosh Hashana seems to have perfect timing.

The holiday starts tomorrow evening, less than a week after the official start of fall.  We just finished packing our largest set of orders for Israeli Harvest, our small business that supports Israeli farmers.   On the farm, our fall crops are starting to look stronger and we have already had a few cold nights. This morning I saw my first group of yellow leaves falling.

For me, the Jewish holidays feel a bit more elevated when they fall during the work week and you are surrounded by people taking the day off from their busy jobs and stepping out of firm routines.  And once you have stepped out of your own daily routine it is always interesting to watch people rushing off to meetings like it is any other day.

This year, I am ready for a new start. I am ready to stop sloshing around in the post-flood mode and step onto firmer ground.  I am ready to do some of the hard thinking that is required before Yom Kippur and hopefully (with my  husband’s help) even get through some parts of the service without stopping for childcare.   I am looking forward to joining friends and family for lunch and maybe an afternoon walk to look at all the lovely gardens on Capitol Hill.

I wish you a Happy Healthy New Year, Shana Tova and happy fall!

Rain, Floods and Standing Water

Finally, we are getting a chance to dry out after the flooding rains soaked our basement, flooded some of our fields and even toppled a few of our young apple trees whose roots had nothing firm to hold. Our problems were tiny relative to others nearby who lost their homes and businesses — but still, it has not been an easy week.

The rains on Thursday were so powerful that water started to pool
near the foundation of our house, nearby rivers overflowed their banks and we
were stunned by the photos of flooded homes and shops in our town on Facebook and the news. Later that evening we had to wake sleeping children and take cover in the dank basement during a tornado warning. The next day the rains continued and it felt like they might never stop.

The worst damage on the farm was on a field that a neighbor is
allowing us to use for the first time this year. A stand of winter squash and
watermelon were flooded and remained underwater long enough to drown. We could not walk there without the mud grabbing hold of shoes and pulling. One area is still ponding, 5 days after the rain, the ground just cannot absorb any more water.

Standing out there, watching my husband throw ruined squash on the
ground was a very sad sight. Just a week earlier we were listening to stories
from farms in Vermont and New Jersey who lost so much more. So even as the
water pooled around our ankles and we are surrounded by dying squash vines, we  were grateful that things were not worse.

By Sunday the sun came out and we harvested dozens of crates colorful acorn and butternut squash from the higher ground on that field.  So things are looking up for now, we hope the ground has a chance to drain before the next storm.

tomato time

We try to eat at least somewhat seasonally in our house, switching from fresh vegetables to frozen in the winter and following the fruit that is coming from Florida rather than  further afield.  Most of the year I skip over my fresh produce section in the store because there is minimal organic and we either have fresh vegetables from the farm or are working through our frozen stash.

Of course, I make exceptions but it always feels particularly strange and a little like a betrayal to buy tomatoes from someone else’s farm, especially from an anonymous supermarket source . Plus, if I do break down and buy a tomato  in the winter they are usually pretty awful (like they have been in cold storage). So for the most part, we do not eat fresh tomatoes except during tomato season.

So, when the first tomatoes start to come in from our farm it is cause for a mini-celebration. This is our first tomato week, a little later than usual but they are full size (cherry tomatoes usually come first but they were planted later this year.)   This year, we celebrated with fancy Capri salads with fresh mozzarella which seems increasingly available.  The children are eating them sliced on plates with a little sea salt and enjoying the messy fingers.  And my husband and I are eating them whole like apples. 

If all goes well (tss, tss) and we avoid  pitfalls like early blight, late blight, blossom end rot and those horrible new invasive stink bugs, we could be picking tomatoes past Labor Day and even at a trickle until the first frost.   We have had some tough tomato diseases blow through in the past few years, so we need luck, prayers, crossed fingers, precautions, enough (but not too much) rain and whatever else works.   So while the tomatoes are coming in, we  will try to be sure to enjoy them a little more knowing that we will miss them in the winter.

This post originally appeared on kveller.com.

Kveller.com offers a Jewish twist on parenting, everything a Jewish family could need for raising Jewish children–including crafts, recipes, activities, Hebrew and Jewish names for babies…and advice from Mayim Bialik.